Reading primary historical source documents, even in translation, is less and less popular today. The reading attention span has been traduced more and more by the growing demand for snippets of edited and propagandized bits of information.

In the case of Adolf Hitler, most people interested enough to read anything more than "Hitler Quotes" from some internet database will have consulted his First Book, MEIN KAMPF (My Battle/Struggle), which was published in 1925/26.

For many decades, from the date of its first publication on through until even now, Mein Kampf is considered important as a "key to Hitler's mind."

Anyone who has come to Mein Kampf expecting to be riveted by the evident, magnetic genius of a dictator who moved millions to follow him likely has been shocked. Mein Kampf from its first publication until now is evidence of just how disjointed Hitler's pathological mind was in 1925-26.

In this work drafted two years later, in 1928, unpublished with an informal title merely descriptive of its fact, Hitler's ZWEITES BUCH ("Second Book"), Hitler's mind presents thoughts and arguments much more coherent; more succinct; clearer; and, much "truer keys" to his agenda and plans in the coming years.

Most assuredly, because this book was not published until 1961--and because Mein Kampf already was (and remains) "fixed" in the public mind as "classic Hitler"--if this Zweites Buch were required reading for students of World War II as (1) Hitler's more matured ideology and (2) a necessary correlate by which to evaluate all that followed from 1933, after Hitler became Reichskanzler ("Reich-Chancellor"), many scholarly works would require revision.

For example, look at historians' reconstructions and explanations of Hitler's attitudes towards Great Britain and the United States. Without the Zweites Buch, perhaps many explanations would remain essentially the same. However, with this book from 1928, one reads from Hitler himself exactly what he thinks, without reconstruction.

In some works, historians have depended upon the diaries of Wehrmacht generals to illuminate what formerly seemed Hitler's "indeterminacy" or "vacillation" regarding England. Read the Zweites Buch and find some statements which are more illuminative than the generals' private thoughts.

Compared with the ponderous, overwrought, mental-bludgeoning of his readers in Hitler's ersten Buch, Mein Kampf, his zweites Buch is much tighter, better-thought, completely engaging, for anyone interested in this pathological dictator's inner mental world, which he projected upon the entire outer political world.

In chapter one, "War and Peace," Hitler begins, "Politics is history in the making."

Had the world read his zweites Buch in 1928, rather than ignoring the convolutions and convulsions in his ersten Buch, perhaps the leaders and generals in the Free World would have done better with the seeds of policy Hitler discussed, which might have prevented more of the history Hitler made through their misjudgments, mismanagements, and second-guessing.

I advise serious students of Adolf Hitler to read this book, or be crippled by the earlier, more primitive notions in Mein Kampf.

JDW